3 August 2017 — DevScore, the software developer skills-assessment SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) that launched earlier this year at HR Tech World, has introduced a brand new Acquisition feature — one that complements and works seamlessly with its existing functionality — bringing recruiters, hiring managers, and HR a complete candidate-matching, acquisition, assessing, and digital screening service.

Customers can now make targeted developer searches based on actual coding experience; an industry first — a feature that just didn’t exist before in HR tech. They can also filter results by skills, experience, and geographical location easily; allowing them to cherry pick the exact software development talent they need for their business’ individual requirements.

DevScore’s unique and rapidly growing database contains millions of developers. The new Acquisition function finds and connects with those that are actively looking for work.

“In the fast-paced world of software development, acquisition, assessing, and hiring great people quickly is business-critical,” explains DevScore founder, Peter Cummings. “With the new Acquisition feature, recruiters can now literally go from initial sourcing to potentially interviewing a candidate in minutes.”

The Acquisition function is a direct challenge to job boards and candidate sourcing companies that lack the depth of understanding needed to make fully-informed hiring recommendations. These platforms largely use simplistic text-based matching software and lack any sort of advanced assessment and selection criteria. However, up until now coding analysis just hasn’t been available to recruiters.

“There are loads of sites where you can hire recruiters and freelancers,” says Cummings. “But it’s important that you can qualify how good a developer is. There’s always a chance some will exaggerate their CVs, but without any form of code analysis, recruiters can’t get an accurate picture of what a developer can and can’t do. DevScore can literally see what the coder has created and assesses the quality of their code; which enables us to understand how they stack up among their peers.”

Within the Acquisition tool, users can create a customise specific search; filtering developer information by numerous criteria — including experience, flexibility, skills, and location. In addition, searches can be saved and lists can be easily downloaded by users. And where no exact data immediately exists for a chosen set of criteria, customers can create a notification that will let them know when there’s a specific match. Also, API integration makes it easy to pull in DevScore functionality to any job board or talent acquisition tool.

“Everyone who wants to be a developer, can be,” says Cummings. “It’s unlike most other jobs. Your contributions and experience are highly visible. The Acquisition module can help determine which who’s an expert and who’s a novice — reducing the time-to-hire and increasing the quality-of-hire.”

About DevScore:

DevScore enables recruiters and HR staff – even the non-tech savvy – to accurately assess and validate a developer’s skills and experience in an easy understandable format. No need to scan every resume anymore – now you can compile a shortlist with the right candidates in record time.

We scan code repositories across the internet, and analyse the code that developers have submitted. Using our analytics engine we are able to find out how many months the developer has actually used a language, framework, or a development style for. We then assign the developer a score – the DevScore – and from that provide a rank for the developer both worldwide and in the country where they live.

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When it comes to demand for IT talent; developers, coders, and programmers have never had it so good. But do those making these key hires always know what they’re buying? As Peter Cummings, Founder, DevScore, wonders how long recruiters can stay on the backfoot for.

Peter Cummings is a highly sought after IT Specialist with expert knowledge in three distinct fields; IT Security, Cloud Computing and Development.

Recruiting for niche IT positions continues to be a problem. It’s not that there’s (necessarily) a shortage of talent, but as demand for connected devices and Internet of Things technology starts to gain traction, organisations that have never before hired software developers and programmers now find themselves in desperate need of them. Yesterday.

Great news for us techies, right? Well, kinda. The thing is we need to make sure that what we’re being hired to do, is exactly what the companies hiring us need us to actually do. That might sound odd, but if (like me) you’ve been in the dev game for a good few years, you’ll appreciate the challenge of being led tentatively towards a role that your skills aren’t the best fit for, or being ushered into an organisation where the need initially identified isn’t quite as urgent as first thought.

With the shoe on the other foot for a moment — it’s hard for those tasked with hiring us to keep track of IT demands. Not just because IT has a pretty steep learning curve; but it’s constantly changing. A lot of HRs and recruiters don’t know what they don’t know. They lack the depth of technical knowledge needed to hire the right coder for the job — because they aren’t coders themselves.

Conventional wisdom just doesn’t apply. Illustrating a developer’s breadth of expertise using just a CV doesn’t work, so recruiters resort to other methods, doing their best to assess skills through coding tests and other time consuming tasks. Which can often be a massive waste of time for all.

Where development’s concerned, for HR types, getting the right person in place matters more than in most other hires — mostly because we coders come at a premium and are often fought over tooth and nail by different companies.

So how can we demonstrate our skills and expertise in the right way?

Well, first we need to emphasise our specific skillsets and explain how experience and expertise supercede formal education. A lot of software developers are completely self-taught (myself included) and few have any formal education (and we’re in good company considering the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg swapped education for entrepreneurship).

The fact is the best person for the job might not be who you’d first expect. This fact requires a bit of a mindset shift from a HR perspective. And while skills are inherently difficult to prove, demonstrating impact is a good alternative to coding tests, in-depth interviews, and awkward discussions.

Overall, it’s crucial that companies hire developers that can hit the ground running — for everyone’s benefit. But getting the right fit for any job means helping HRs and recruiters better understand the value you can bring and guiding them through your specific skills — without dazzling them with technical jargon.

Insight like this will ultimately help recruiters and HR managers minimise hiring errors in an increasingly important and costly area of their businesses.

Plus it’ll make your working life a whole lot easier — so you can concentrate on doing the job you were hired to do, rather than pick your way through Jira tickets and technical documentation until the lead dev gets it together…

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Peter Cummings is a highly sought after IT Specialist with expert knowledge in three distinct fields; IT Security, Cloud Computing and Development.

I’m still reeling from last week’s HR Tech World event in London. It was a big one for us — we finally launched DevScore and were delighted with the response we had. Admittedly, it’s been some time since I’ve worked in the HR sector (as a developer) but I’ve done the rounds on the technology scene for a good ten years or more. However, I was more than taken aback at how tech-savvy HR has become. To keep pace, companies of all shapes and sizes are really upping their game on the recruitment front: which is good news for companies like mine that focus on helping businesses meet oncoming challenges.

Here are some of the key things I learnt, from talking to prospective customers and other exhibitors, about what’s happening at the crossroads of HR and technology:

Smart devices mean demand for developers will increase exponentially

The emergence of the Internet of Things will add millions of new developer jobs to the market, and demand for coders will scale to previously unseen levels. As more and more devices and appliances incorporate embedded software, companies who’ve never employed software developers will quickly need to upskill their workforces.

We’re talking about big manufacturing companies here: the kind who make everything from vacuum cleaners to electrical screwdrivers. In order for these businesses to compete and stay relevant in the digital age, ultimately they now need people with a different set of smarts — those who know software as well as those who understand hardware.

We need to overcome bias in developer recruitment

Finding developers is one challenge. Finding the right developers with the skills needed to tackle the mission-critical tasks you have is quite another(!). The battle to recruit and retain developer talent is about to get harder. But there’s a lot of untapped potential out there: a wealth of coders who haven’t been able to break into IT development. We need ways to find great people and bring them into the fold.

Development is a field where anyone can play — there are no education, gender, racial, or religious boundaries. We need to be able to find those with the right skills, whoever they are, wherever they are. To do this, businesses need to objectively analyse developers’ skills, and make hiring decisions based on ability. Nothing else.

New sourcing tactics are needed to satisfy demand for developers

Encouraging more coders to participate professionally relies on HR (and IT) professionals changing their perceptions on ‘how a developer is supposed to act’ and instead focusing on ‘what a developer can do.’

For example, there are several initiatives in both the US and UK — like The Last Mile in the US and Code4000 here in the UK — that are teaching prison inmates to code. By giving them work experience (while incarcerated) the idea is that they’ll have the skills to take a junior developer position when they get out.

I personally got into web development with the help of a good friend after working as a chef, and I hope to pass that mentoring experience on to new developers. In fact we’re building a platform, DevForge, to do just that.

Retaining developers means helping them evolve

In an industry where the fight for talent is on, employers need to find more ways to retain their developers. But money and work-life balance aside, most developers see their careers as a work in progress, and a good proportion of them value learning and development opportunities.

A crucial part of this is giving them ‘hack-time’, allowing them 10-20% of their working week to work on their own projects or learn new skills. This could be hugely beneficial for employers; ensuring faster adoption of new technologies, satisfying the developers’ need to evolve, and ultimately could be key to retaining developer talent. That’s the endgame we’re striving towards at DevScore — we’re creating a symbiotic platform where employers can build a roadmap to help their business move forward, while growing developers’ skills.

IT departments need more HR input

There can be little doubt that developers are one of the trickiest resources to manage. Few companies have specific developer talent management capabilities, which means it’s easy overlook an individual’s contribution to a project. That’s why IT departments need to play a more active role when recruiting and retaining developers.

By effectively mapping the skills and capabilities of their teams — including outsourced development teams — IT managers can help make better informed strategic decisions; like who should be promoted, who’s no longer needed, and who would be best suited to managing a project using a new technology.

It’s not just about satisfying demand; a developer’s skillset and aptitude have direct impact on a business’ HR reputation. Getting the balance wrong could lead to high developer turnover, missed opportunities, and big financial and talent losses.

About the Author:

Peter Cummings started working life as a chef and restaurant professional, before teaching himself coding and making the leap into software development. He’s now an internationally renowned IT consultant, thought leader, and founder of DevScore; a SaaS platform that helps recruiters and HR managers source the right developers for their businesses. He’s lived and worked everywhere from Greenland to Nigeria and speaks five languages.

About DevScore:

DevScore enables recruiters and HR staff – even the non-tech savvy – to accurately assess and validate a developer’s skills and experience in an easy understandable format. No need to scan every resume anymore – now you can compile a shortlist with the right candidates in record time.

DevScore is a tool for recruiters and HR staff, offering both an intuitive user interface and also an API, so that it can be integrated into your existing tools and applications, providing you the information you need, when you need it.